On Carmen Perez’s 17th birthday, she says, she was burying her younger sister.

On her 40th birthday, she was helping co-ordinate one of the largest mobilizations in the nation’s history: the Women’s March on Washington, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The social justice activist told the story of what happened in between at the Imagine festival in Belfast on Wednesday evening, as the keynote speaker at Democracy Day, promoted by the Building Change Trust.

“I come to my idea of justice based on the man who raised me. When my sister was killed, my father was asked if he wanted to press charges against the person who had taken her life. And he said ‘I will never take another mother’s child away’. For me, that was the first lesson that allowed me to commit myself to work with people who are or have been incarcerated.”

Today, Perez is Executive Director of the Gathering for Justice, which was founded by actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte in 2005 and works to eliminate racial inequities in America’s criminal justice system. Perez is also the co-founder of Justice League NYC and Justice League CA, based on the principles of Kingian non-violent social change.

Perez, who grew up in California and studied under Angela Davis says that through visiting prison inmates she learned to see people in terms of their humanity. “Dealing with men facing long sentences you need to try to bring hope to even the darkest places.”

“I believe in transformation and I believe in redemption and I know that when prisoners are coming home, someone has to teach them about love and hope.”

She told an emotional story about returning to her hometown to confront “the community that had brought the most pain to me” and facing up to the effects of the criminal justice system on her own family, before talking about how being in Belfast allowed her to witness “the commonalities we all have.” Speaking about visits to Venezuela, Mexico and elsewhere, she said: “When you work in communities you realize how things that happen on a local level also impact the global community.

“We need to connect beyond the borders that are placed on us. How can we learn from one another, what’s our common ground, what tugs at our heart?”

“I’ve had to meet with people I disagreed with – I had to meet people where they were and champion them to our cause. When we talk about unity, we don’t mean uniformity. When we talk about reconciliation we have to be willing to meet people where they’re at.

“I may come from the United States but I see my liberation bound in yours.”

 

The Women’s March

She was on a train when she heard that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election. “I had never experienced despair like that, since I lost my sister”, and it was that sense of grief that helped motivate her as she worked to organize the Women’s March, with the aim, she said, of centering and involving the most marginalized communities.

She spoke about building the march from its initial Facebook activism and the challenge of creating an inclusive event – with the realization that it had to be about more than just Trump – and about the importance of intersectionality in assembling a march that appealed to as many people as possible. “When you’re building something collectively, you have to put your differences aside, so it had to be ‘high impact, low ego’ whatever people’s priorities were.

“There’s a lane for everyone – even people who just woke up.”

“We were so tired over the ten weeks that it took us – all volunteers – to put the march together. But it showed what can be done if we keep our eyes on the prize. I wasn’t going to see my rights rolled back and I was going to make sure that Trump and his administration knew loud and clear that we were all working together in unity, and that there was more of us than there were of them.”

(In a recent article she talks about the “five ways to effectively protest.”)

Perez and her colleague also spoke about the school walkouts that day protesting gun violence and praised a new generation that was “unapologetic about their activism,” emphasizing how the Parkland students who are organizing the March for our Lives in the nation’s capital and across the world next weekend fit in the tradition of civic activism.

“You have to believe that another world is possible.”

Meanwhile, the legendary Joan Baez – pictured above at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington – plays at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall on Monday night.

The 77-year-old singer, songwriter and civil rights activist is on the European leg of her Fare Thee Well tour, which runs through February next year in support of “Whistle Down The Wind,” her first original album in a decade, which was released this month.

She once told an interviewer she didn’t believe in labels, “but if you have to call me something, first it’s human being, then pacificist, then folk singer.”

In a recent interview with the Irish Times, she spoke about joining the Peace People marches in Belfast in 1976. “The marches in Northern Ireland were pretty groundbreaking back then, not to mention it was led by women – which in those days and age was pretty extraordinary. Such courageousness helped create change and doubled the efforts – something I’ve witnessed in so many places all over the world,” she said.

Last year, Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by her longtime friend and fellow activist musician Jackson Browne; who, along with many other artists took part in her 75th birthday celebration concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

Watch the short MTV documentary about her life, Rebel Icon, here:

 

 

 

Also published on Medium.